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Serepisos Swiss Hope Spams High-Profile Developer

Terry Serepisos is still hopeful of getting his money from Western Gulf Advisory but a fellow New Zealand developer has stayed well away from the under-fire company’s offers.

Mr Serepisos, who is trying to stave off liquidation proceedings from the IRD, is relying on a promised US$100 million loan from Swiss-backed WGA.
NBR understands he has paid an upfront fee of more than $1 million.

Tim Manning, one of the few New Zealand property developers left standing, said he had been following NBR’s coverage of the WGA saga with interest.
And he revealed he had received a number of unsolicited email offers of loans from WGA through various agents.

“That same crowd emailed me about a dozen times over the last two or three years,” he told the NBR. However, unlike Mr Serepisos, Mr Manning didn’t give WGA any money, saying the whole thing looked suspicious.

“The standard rule is that very few funding deals come from offshore. And when they ask you for money up front it’s likely there are ulterior motives.”
He said he wasn’t aware of any other New Zealand developers who had given money to WGA and if any had they would probably be keeping quiet about it.

“Developers have a propensity to tell the good stories and not the bad ones.”